4th Suresh Tendulkar Memorial Lecture

This
annual Lecture Series was first instituted in 2014 in honour of Dr.
Suresh Tendulkar, an Indian economist and former chief of National
Statistical Commission. The series was the brainchild of Dr.
Chandiramani, Director SSE and Dean Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, whose association with Professor Tendulkar went back to the
90’s.

This
year, SSE had the honour of hosting Mrs. Girija Srinivasan,
International Consultant, Development Finance and Rural Livelihoods
expert and Mr. N. Srinivasan, an Expert adviser and international
consultant for the World Bank, ADB, CGAP, IFAD, GIZ, KFW, Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and MicroSave. They delivered the lecture on
the theme " Financial Services: Do they impact livelihood and
poverty reduction?"

The
event started when Dr. Chandiramani welcomed the guests and the
gathering and spoke of the genesis of the lecture series. She talked
about how Prof.
Tendulkar’s work is a testimony and tremendous contributions
towards alleviation of poverty.

Dr
Mujumdar addressed the audience with a speech about the Tendulkar
family and his personal experience with them. He also said that
instituting a lecture in the memory of a personality as great as
Prof. Tendulkar is an honour for any academic organisation.

The
speakers Mr. and Mrs Srinivasan have been authors of, "State of
India's Livelihoods Report" 2015 and 2016 and are in the process
of writing the 2017 Report. They discussed whether financial services
have led to poverty reduction and the prospects and challenges of
rural livelihoods. The speakers have hands-on experience of working
at the grass root level.

Mrs
Girija Srinivasan took the stage for the first half of the lecture
and deliberated on the topic- Do financial services result in poverty
reduction? Mrs Srinivasan's lecture covered the various aspects which
contribute to poverty, stressing on the inclusion of women in
capacity building and enterprise formation through Self Help Groups
(SHGs).

Mrs.
Srinivasan talked about how microfinance
has a significant positive impact on per capita income, non-land
assets and poverty incidence. Microfinance fails, however, to
engender positive change on other dimensions, namely non-food
expenditures, per capita food expenditures, medical expenditures, and
livestock…. microfinance generally has a short-term positive effect
on borrowers, but that this effect is not necessarily sustained in
the long-term .
At the same time she enlightened us about the positive impacts of
financial inclusion and stressed upon financial inclusion to
eliminate poverty.

Mrs
Srinivasan’s lecture was followed by Mr. N Srinivasans lecture.
Mr Srinvasan had been a central banker and development banker for 30
years (in Reserve Bank of India and NABARD). He is a student of
economics, with development economics as a special interest.

The
lecture he delivered concentrated on the “finance of rural
livelihood”.

He talked about the size of the challenge when
in it comes to rural areas.Also he put some light on the rural-urban
divide and talked about increase in migration and urbanization. He
also discussed the government’s effort in bringing the rural areas
at par. Mr N. Srinivasan gave the several measures that can be used
to improve the livelihood of the rural and which were very
enlightening.

He
concluded the speech by talking about that the livelihood development
should be facilitated and choices should be given to people. Also
there should be an increase in subsidies and investments of such
institutions.These two enlightening lectures were followed by a
highly interactive question and answer session.

Realising the rising importance of quantitative research methods in the domain of economics and social science, Symbiosis Teaching Learning Resource Centre and Symbiosis school of Economics in collaboration with The Indian Econometric Society organised a six day long FDP on Basic Econometrics and Time Series Data Analysis from 20th-26th November, 2017. Dr Jyoti Chandiramani, Director, SSE and Dr.Shrabani Mukherjee, Associate Professor, SSE have conducted the whole event. Read More